1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic transaction apparatus for allowing users or customers to deposit money in the form of financial documents such as checks, and more particularly to an automatic transaction apparatus for automatically settling deposits when operated by customers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Financial institutions find a wide use of automatic transaction apparatus. Automatic transaction apparatus are operated by customers to automatically make deposits and withdrawals. In Europe and America, it is popular to deposit money in the form of checks in banking and financial institutions. Since checks are manually processed in back offices, it requires a large expenditure of personnel expenses to process checks. For this reason, there has been a demand for automatic transaction apparatus with an ability to automatically process checks.
FIG. 27 of the accompanying drawings illustrates a check.
For depositing a check in an automatic transaction apparatus, the customer first puts the check into an envelope, and then inserts the envelope into the automatic transaction apparatus. The envelope collected from the automatic transaction apparatus is opened in a back office. After the check removed from the envelope is received, its sum is confirmed, and an MICR (magnetic ink character recognition) mark is manually printed in the sum column. Then, the check is processed by a check processing apparatus.
Because the automatic transaction apparatus is automatized to only receive checks, the checks received by the automatic transaction apparatus need to be manually processed in the back office. Furthermore, it will take some time to cash the checks due to a time-consuming check settling process.
Attempts have heretofore been made to add a check processing capability to automatic transaction apparatus. The face of a check of the type which is widely used is shown in FIG. 27. As shown in FIG. 27, a check 100 has on a lower portion of its face an MICR column 101 marked with MICR numerals printed in a magnetic ink which are representative of the code of a banking institution which has issued the check, the code of the issuer, and an issuance serial number.
The check 100 also carries on an upper portion of its face the name 102 of the issuer and a data 105 of issuance, and on a middle portion of its face the name 103 of a party to which the check is payable, the sum 104 to be paid which is expressed by numerals, and the sum 106 to be paid which is expressed by alphabetical letters.
An automatic transaction apparatus for automatically processing the check 100 has a reading unit and a printing unit. The reading unit comprises an image reader and a magnetic head. The image reader optically reads the face of the check 100 which has been inserted by the customer, and recognizes the numerals of the sum 104. The magnetic head recognizes the banking institution which has issued the check, the issuer, and the issuance serial number.
The automatic transaction apparatus sends the recognized data to a host computer. The host computer settles the check 100 and transfers settled data back to the automatic transaction apparatus. In the automatic transaction apparatus, an MICR encoder of the printing unit prints a settled sum in the MICR column 101 of the check 100. The printing unit also prints the data of transaction and the account number on the check 100. The automatic transaction apparatus then stores the check 100.
In this manner, the automatic transaction apparatus automatically processes checks with the reading unit and the printing unit.
Checks have face and back sides and different orientations. Therefore, checks may be inserted into automatic transaction apparatus with the face side or the back side up and/or in different orientations. Heretofore, automatic transaction apparatus are required to have a plurality of reading units and a plurality of printing units in order to cope with the different patterns in which checks are inserted into the automatic transaction apparatus. Accordingly, the automatic transaction apparatus have been large in size because of a complex and large check deposition mechanism that is required.
If a check deposition mechanism has a single reading unit and a single printing unit, then it additionally needs a complex reversal mechanism for bringing the faces of inserted checks in one direction and a complex aligning mechanism for orienting inserted checks in alignment for processing. These additional mechanisms tend to increase the time required for checks to be properly deposited in the automatic transaction apparatus, and are also liable to cause an inserted check to be jammed. These problems have prevented users from relying on the automatic transaction apparatus in depositing checks.